Glendora is a cable TV producer and judicial activist from New York. Her birth name was Glendora Vesta Folsom. She is the host of A Chat with Glendora, which has broadcast over 4,000 shows since 1972 on the Public-access television channels of cable systems all over the United States.
Glendora V. Folsom was born on May 1, 1928 in Presque Isle, Maine. Her father's name was Ralph, and he was a barber. Her mother was Edna. Glendora had three siblings—two brothers and a sister. When she was still a child, her parents moved to Springfield, MA, where she attended Classical High School and then went to American International College. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and English in 1950 ("Aboard Milton Bradley" 29).
After graduation, Glendora was a research assistant at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1951, she worked at NBC in Hollywood, as a script girl; she also performed other behind the scenes duties, allowing her to became more familiar with how television programs were produced (Tavel, 6) While working in Hollywood, she met numerous celebrities, including Jack Webb, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jimmy Durante, Martin & Lewis, and Talula Bankhead. Years later, Bob Hope would let her tell jokes to his studio audience after his radio show was taped.
She returned to Massachusetts circa 1953, and began her own television career, as a children's show host. Her first show was "Glendora and her Picture Party" on channel 19 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It was sponsored and ran for 15 minutes per week. She was then hired at WMUR-TV in Manchester NH, where she began her program, the SS Glendora. The show ran five days a week. She was the Skipper of the mythical Fun and Games ship, the SS Glendora. She played the captain, and children would play the role of her sailors (Tavel 6).
By 1955, she had brought her SS Glendora to WBZ-TV, the Westinghouse station in Boston. It was sponsored by Milton Bradley games and color crayons. The next company to pay for the SS Glendora was General Electric, WRGB, Channel 6 Schenectady/Troy/Albany. She was there for 6 years, Monday through Friday, 45 minutes a day. Five days a week, attired in a silvery pleated skirt and button-up blouse with large epaulets, She was the captain of "Satellite Six," a '50's-style sci-fi spaceship set, where she also aired cartoons. Her nemesis was her boss, the Munimula ("aluminum" spelled backwards), a disembodied gibberish talk voice on the ship's telephone who would periodically call in to give Glendora grief.
In 1972, after being away from television for a decade, Glendora entered cable TV public access with "A Chat with Glendora". Her program, which aired on Valley Cable TV in Bridgeport CT, focused on ordinary people from the local community who were doing extraordinary things. On this program, she interviewed local heroes and heroines, as well as people going above and beyond to perform community service (Smith D1). She also commuted to Buffalo, where her husband, journalist Franklyn Buell, lived. They had married on December 25, 1954, when he was a reporter and later city editor for the Springfield Union (a job he had held since 1948). By the mid 1970s, he was reporting for the Buffalo Evening News.
Glendora remained on cable and public access television throughout the 198s and 1990s. In 1987, she appeared as a guest on the David Letterman Show. By the 1990s, she was living in White Plains NY, according to the New York Times, which noted that she was the host of a weekly talk show on local public access there ("L.I. Cable" 44).
According to her website, she is known for telling lawyer jokes, dressing in a white straw hat and wearing white gloves, humming along with the Christian hymns which provide her background music, and for her ethical vegetarianism. She is also known for using the legal system to preserve her right to be on the air. In 1994, she sued and won when a Long Island NY cable system removed her program in a way she felt was arbitrary and unfair. The judge ordered her program to be restored ("L.I. Cable" 44). Glendora is the author of the Glendora Happy Book. In 2010, she was the subject of a documentary about her long career on television. An excerpt can be found here: [1]
Glendora's husband Franklyn Buell died October 19, 2003 in Chatham, NY. He left a collection of books about sports, including the baseball encyclopedia, "Who's Who in Baseball" back to the 1940s and other rare books. He also kept a scrapbook of the baseball games he attended, the box scores of each and the article on each from the newspaper. Glendora preserved his work and established a museum about it.
Glendora currently resides in Kinderhook, NY, where she continues to produce episodes of "A Chat With Glendora".
"Aboard Milton Bradley Liner." Springfield (MA) Union, September 9, 1955, p. 29.
"Long Island Cable Ordered To Restore A Public Access Program." New York Times, August 14, 1994, p. L44.
Smith, Betty. "The Little People Rate Big In TV Chat With Glendora." Bridgeport (CT) Post, February 17, 1974, p. D1.
Tavel, Emilie. "Children Jam TV Ship For Fun And Learning." Christian Science Monitor, December 14, 1955, p. 6.